Why the remote hiring revolution will remain after the crisis is over

Having been forced to enact mandatory work-from-home policies in a matter of weeks, companies across industries are now adopting remote hiring models in order to meet their recruitment demands. While it might be the massive layoffs taking place across startups and enterprises alike that are making the news, there are still thousands of businesses that need to hire during the crisis.

Amazon, for example, is hiring 100,000 new workers to meet the demands of isolation deliveries, and will be conducting this recruitment online. Meanwhile, tech giants like Google and Facebook, along with recruiters such as PageGroup and Robert Walters, have all switched to online interviews. 

While transitioning to fully remote recruitment might not have been in the cards for many businesses, its benefits are here to stay – long after quarantine ends. Hiring remote, especially when using an AI-powered platform, boasts numerous upsides, including reducing time-to-hire, boosting candidate experience, and gaining new data insights into candidates and your recruitment strategy. Here’s why it’s here to stay.

Faster decision-making allows for increased agility: By leveraging AI-enhanced platforms throughout the hiring funnel, organizations can speed up their overall processes and make faster decisions. Automated resume screening powered by AI frees up recruiters’ time and matches them with well-suited candidates in a matter of seconds. Meanwhile, automated interview and assessment scheduling saves hiring managers time as neither they nor candidates have to organize a time that suits both parties via a back-and-forth email chain.

When it comes to video interviews, candidates are freed from the hours and money involved in traveling to physical locations, and employers find that applicants are more readily available. The result is interviews that can be scheduled sooner, and decisions that can be made faster.

Speeding up the recruitment process is especially important for organizations providing important services in the face of the pandemic, such as in logistics and healthcare. However, outside times of crisis, becoming more time-efficient has been a crucial pain point for many businesses seeking top talent: 57% of jobseekers lose interest in a position if the hiring process is too long. So, it’s no surprise that LinkedIn sees time-to-hire as its “North Star” metric when it comes to recruiting.

Technology exists to recreate the in-person experience: Before inadvertently finding themselves adopting remote hiring, many organizations were concerned that a level of human touch would be lost if they transitioned to a fully online model. Luckily, there are tools available that can help recreate this experience.

For example, online recruitment platforms can boost candidate experience by providing information about the company and a warm welcome while the interviewee waits for a video call to start. This could be a pre-recorded video of the physical workplace or a “hello” from the CEO. Touches like these recreate the common reception setting that candidates experience when going for a physical interview. And as organizations dive deeper into the possibilities that come with remote hiring, many candidates actually report being more comfortable with video interviews; they find them more flexible, and as a result, less stress-inducing.

In trying to recreate the elements of in-person interaction of the recruitment process, it’s important to note the differences between comprehensive hiring tools that are specifically designed to provide a quality experience and more simple software. While video conferencing platforms like Zoom might serve as a quick fix, for remote interviews in an emergency, they aren’t scalable and do not allow you to store candidate data all in one place. 

Organizations want to be prepared in case this happens again: Many companies have been forced to undergo a transition to remote hiring without the level of preparation that they might have otherwise implemented. Transitioning to a remote hiring tool, especially one that leverages AI, requires proper training and understanding if it is to be championed by the teams using it.

It’s become clear that COVID-19 might not be the last pandemic the world faces, and that there will be other crises that obstruct in-person hiring. Companies are realizing that having a remote hiring process in place, with staff trained to use the tools to their full potential, best prepares them for future challenges. Given the volatility of global events and the rapid succession at which life-changing crises can occur, organizations don’t want to get caught unprepared again.

Companies will need to re-hire en masse: Once quarantine measures begin to relax, many businesses such as restaurants, bars and shops will need to rehire workforces that were laid off. Yet even while some sectors reopen, social distancing will likely be in force for longer, meaning unnecessary travel to interviews should be avoided when possible. 

Remote hiring tools facilitate en-masse recruitment through their automated features, allowing recruitment managers to schedule and conduct interviews without delay. In addition, platforms that save past applicant data including resumes and interview recordings exist, which acts as an immediate talent pool that companies can tap into when they need to recruit quickly and on a large scale. 

The post-lockdown job market will no doubt be competitive, so it’s vital that organizations have technology at their disposal that allows them to act fast and maintain candidate experience. In fact, 52% of jobseekers say a lack of response from potential employers is their primary frustration while searching for a job, and the best of those candidates are only in the market for 10 days. By leveraging remote hiring tools, companies can put themselves in the best position to rehire a top workforce and hit the ground running once again.

Despite the quick turnarounds and transitions made necessary by the pandemic, remote hiring success doesn’t happen overnight. To leverage remote hiring to its full potential, organizations need to carefully plan how they will adapt their offline processes to make them work online, and consider the level of technology they require to maintain candidate experience. If they do this, going back to traditional hiring practices once the crisis is over will seem futile, given the power to drive efficiency and obtain top talent that’s now at their disposal.